On Friday 27 February, Big Think partner PwC hosted its second global webcast focused on the question, ‘What would you do if you were not afraid?’ The webcast was part of ‘Aspire to Lead: The PwC Women’s...

Humanity 2.0: The New Normal

Sociologist Steve Fuller says we're headed for a new humanity which will no longer take as given the "normal human body". A good example would be cosmetic neurology, which is essentially plastic surgery for the brain. Where you go in every so often and you get a tune-up of your synapses. It's already done at a medical school.

What's the Big Idea?

One implication of all this is that life expectancy won't uniformly go up, Fuller predicts it'll start to be bimodal distribution—some people will live beyond 100 and there'll be a large number of people who die under the age of 70. "That will be because people will definitely take advantage of the enhancements on offer, but others won't have those choices open to them."